Her eyes flashed.
“You think more of her than of me. You—you think that she is a marvel of innocence and purity, that she has never loved any one but you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, with something like sternness in his tone.
Lady Ada bit her lip. It was not the time to refer to Norman Druce; she would keep that as a trump card to be played at the proper moment.
“Nothing, nothing; do not be impatient with me. I only mean that she may not be so guileless as you think. But—ah, what does it matter? We are not to part, Trafford? You will come to me when anything troubles you, just as you have been used to do? Oh, my love, my love, is it too much to ask? Think—think of all I have surrendered to-day; think—” Her voice broke.
“Let it be so,” he said after a pause, during which Esmeralda could picture him bending over her. She shuddered, and her hand pressed against her heart.
“I will go now,” said Lady Ada. “Good-bye, Trafford. Remember, though you are lost to me forever, my love is never dead, can never die. How could it, while I remembered that though she bought you with her accursed money she has not bought your heart. That is still mine, Trafford. Say it; bend down and whisper it, oh, my love, my love!”
Esmeralda felt choking, fainting, the desire to cry aloud almost overmastered her. She covered her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket to stifle the shriek that threatened to express the agony of tortured love and womanly shame that burned like a consuming fire in her bosom. She staggered toward the drawing-room door, but her feet refused to support her, and she sunk on to a couch. There she sat, breathing painfully a moment or two, then she struggled to her feet and went slowly upstairs, supporting herself by the balustrade. Outside the dressing-room door she paused to recover something of her self-possession, then she entered.
They were waiting for her impatiently.
“Well, have you got it, dear?” asked Lady Wyndover, with her back to her.